


Find Me One

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: Every Marine a Wolfbrother [8]
Category: Generation Kill, Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Genre: F/M, Psychic Wolves, Wolf Puppies, animal fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evan leaves Bravo Two, but he doesn't quite get away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Me One

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Templemarker and Iuliamentis for beta!
> 
> Title is from "Sahara" by Eddie from Ohio:
> 
> _If I had no home I'd build one in the sand_   
>  _If I didn't have a love I'd find me one._
> 
> Animal fighting warning is for brief wolf-on-dog violence that doesn't do any serious damage on either side.

After Evan had said all his goodbyes to the Bravo Two guys he turned to tracking down Godfather. It was easy enough--every Marine he passed knew exactly where the battalion commander was located, thanks to the pack-sense. Evan was just outside the chow hall before it occurred to him that he'd gotten used to this, to everyone around him being tuned to a psychic frequency he couldn't hear. It was going to be strange to go back to being just a guy, not The Wolfless Reporter. 

He rubbed his fingers over the faint indentations on his hand from Bo's teeth, and didn't think about the fact that--no matter what Fick had said--he wasn't going to be Bo's Kid anymore, either. He'd known this assignment would do things to him, he just... hadn't expected being adopted to be one of them. Going back to his own life was going to be at least as weird as embedding with First Recon had been.

But first, Evan had just one more conversation ahead of him. Evan took out his notebook and walked over to where Godfather was sitting with his brother Capo lounging to one side of his feet.

"Colonel," Evan said.

Godfather nodded toward the empty seat across from him. Evan took it, noticing again how automatically he moved around the wolf, and how easily he decoded Capo's posture as indicating relaxed confidence and no particular intention to move from his comfortable spot on the cool concrete floor. 

"So, what'd you see, Reporter?" Evan started to open his mouth, though there was no way he could spit out what he'd seen in a few words--he didn't even know how he could compress this into a magazine feature, no matter how generous his editor was with column inches. 

Godfather rolled on regardless of anything Evan might have said. "No other military in the world can do what we do. The Marines are America's shock-troops. Is there anything you want to ask me before you unhitch your wagon?"

Evan winced a little even as he opened his mouth wider. He did want to ask, but the thing he wanted to ask about was the thing that everyone knew and no one talked about. He had no idea whether it was safe to bring it up to Godfather, of all people, though Evan certainly wanted to know what the hell he'd been thinking.

Godfather glanced down at Capo and then up at Evan again, his eyes narrowing a little in thought. "Lieutenant Fick and Sergeant Colbert."

Evan laid his notebook down on the table between them. "Since you bring them up."

Godfather nodded. "I trust you understand why it would have been impossible for any relationship between them to be allowed, due to the chain of command and the temperaments of the wolves involved."

Evan nodded quickly. "I just--leaving them together like that, it seemed...." 

Cruel, but Evan couldn't quite bring himself to say it; it felt like a betrayal of the carefully contained misery he'd observed in both men. He would write about it for strangers to read, but he couldn't bring himself to say it to their CO, who surely already knew.

"Let me ask you this," Godfather said. "As a matter of your personal safety, or the excellence of the men, would you have wanted to be in any other platoon than Lieutenant Fick's, or any other team than Sergeant Colbert's?"

Evan was already shaking his head before the question was out. "No. They were the best."

Godfather nodded, like he'd expected exactly that response. "That's your answer. Not my job to make sure all my little campers have a fun time on spring break, Reporter. All I can concern myself with is ordering these men to do the things that need to be done. Might get them shot, might get them killed. Might mean they suffer some other way. But I know that neither of those men was going to do anything that would give me a reason to separate them, and even more, neither of them was ever going to do anything to let the other down. They're better together. That's why."

Evan was pretty sure that there was--or ought to be--some difference between ordering a man into battle and ordering him to share the most difficult experience of his life with a guy he was crazy about and not allowed to touch, but he wasn't going to argue with Godfather about it now. He made his notes, and then looked up cautiously and said, "So, Captain McGraw."

* * *

Evan managed to secure a hotel room in Kuwait City--the same place he'd stayed less than two months ago, before he'd embedded--but he only went in long enough to drop his bag. His entirely true story about being sent by an officer bitch to check on her pups had won him a ride from a friendly Marine down to Camp Arifjan, where litters born in Kuwait were being housed until they were old enough, and vaccinated enough, to go back to the States.

The camp was a vast motor pool and staging area, but Evan's ride dropped him off at the PX. He barely had time to be baffled and delighted by the sight of a Subway and its line of soldiers and Marines waiting for their sandwiches before he heard a tiny cacophony of high-pitched barking. 

Every wolf in sight turned its attention to the miniature stampede of puppies, so Evan had no trouble locating them. There was an adult wolf running alongside them, entirely failing to corral them; the pup in the lead looked exactly like a tiny, soft-edged version of Bo.

Evan grinned and dropped to his knees, opening his arms to his adopted siblings. They swarmed over him in a furry, yipping tide, sniffing him everywhere and climbing up his thighs, jumping at his arms, climbing up his back. 

Evan laughed helplessly; objectively speaking he had a hundred and fifty pounds of obviously uncontrolled wolf all over him, seven sets of teeth and claws pinning him down from every angle. But after a month and a half in the company of the full-grown military-trained version, he couldn't see them as anything but babies falling all over themselves, without a fraction of the dignity that even Navi usually held about herself.

Bo Junior-- _Oscar Mike_ , Fick had called her, and her scent-name was half diesel fumes, which meant she fit right in here--stood at her full, proud puppy height at Evan's side, barking imperiously at her siblings. Evan remembered Bo's effortless, silent authority and couldn't help skritching _Oscar Mike_ behind the ears until she slumped against his thigh in puppy contentment.

"Oh, I get it," said a voice above Evan, and he looked up and quickly spotted the nametag NAMETH on the Marine's fatigues; this man was brother to the wolf fostering Bo's pups. "You smell like Mom."

Evan stood up cautiously; most of the pups jumped down to mill around his feet, but there was one perched on his shoulder who dug his little claws in and stayed put. Evan raised a hand to hold that one steady and put his other hand out to Nameth.

"Evan Wright. I was embedded with Lieutenant Fick and Bo's platoon. I just left them today, actually. Bo kind of adopted me, and they asked me to come down and see the pups on my way out."

Nameth nodded, shaking Evan's hand as he introduced himself and his sister, Victory. 

When Evan took his right hand back, he immediately dug out his camera. "Would you mind taking a picture of all of us? I promised Fick I'd get one."

"Sure thing," Nameth agreed, looking a little amused. 

Evan crouched down again, letting all the puppies crowd in tightly around him. He flashed a thumbs up at the camera as he smiled, and the puppy on his shoulder shook off his steadying hand only to stand up straight, still refusing to come down. After the flash went off, Evan reached up for him and the puppy jumped cheerfully into his hands.

Evan lowered the puppy onto his knees--it was the white-pawed one, _peanut butter cookies_. Fick had hesitated a little before saying his name, like this one was a little embarrassing, or worrying. It was, Evan had to admit, a weird name for a Marine wolf--a weird scent-name, anyway. He didn't doubt that there was at least one wolf running around with something similar for a spoken name. The other puppies in the litter were named after the desert and the camp they'd been born in, but this pup was different. He squirmed over onto his back under Evan's hands, offering his belly for rubbing, and Evan smiled and obliged. 

Evan moved his other hand toward the pup's ears. He was just thinking that he could hardly believe that this fluffy, good-natured puppy was the offspring of wolves as fiercely imposing as Bo and Frost when the pup curled abruptly sideways to get his teeth around the side of Evan's hand.

Evan froze. The pup looked up at him, teeth touching his skin but not sinking in. Evan could smell--more strongly than the hot asphalt and the crowd of men and wolves and the bread baking at the Subway-- _peanut butter cookies_.

Evan felt a sudden burst of something like recognition, though he'd never been here before and never seen this pup before. The familiarity wasn't like déjà vu. There was nothing surreal about it; it was entirely grounded, entirely present. He just knew.

 _Peanut butter cookies_ clamped down with his teeth and Evan recognized the puppy's thought, separate but mirroring his own exactly: _Yes. Mine._

Evan's other hand was still on his brother's round, soft-furred belly. He could feel the pup's breathing, quicker than his own, and he could taste his own blood as _peanut butter cookies_ released that claiming bite and licked apologetically at the punctures he left behind. The sudden sharp taste of it in his mouth reminded him.

Evan called up his own scent-name and offered it back to his brother, almost as apologetically as _peanut butter cookies_ was licking away the bite. It should have been his brother's place to give him a scent-name, but Evan already had one, as much taste as scent: _hot broken plastic and an explosion of ink_.

 _Peanut butter cookies_ barked assent, wriggling happily as he accepted both the name and its provenance. They were double-brothers, both Bo's children and named by her. 

And, Evan realized fully for the first time, brothers in the other sense, too. They were bonded, as irrevocably as any Marine and his brother. 

Evan looked up--only seconds had passed, and he was just now starting to really feel the sting of the bite--to find Nameth looking exasperated and worried. The other six puppies had backed away from him, respecting their brother's claim on his human. 

"Well," Nameth said, rubbing his face. "Shit."

A din of men's cheers and wolves' triumphant howls went up from all around them, and _peanut butter cookies_ bounced up to his feet and stood on Evan's thighs, barking along with the rest. Evan realized that the puppy's claim, and their new bond, had just been witnessed, in and out of the pack-sense, by dozens of Marines who knew exactly what they'd just seen.

"Uh," Evan said, looking down at the pup and up at Nameth again. He realized abruptly that he could _feel_ Nameth's presence, through his new brother. Through the _pack-sense_. Nameth seemed... not entirely surprised by this turn of events. 

"If you're planning to break the bond you should just go right now and get it over with," Nameth said, his voice harder than the sense of him Evan could feel through the pack-sense, which Evan thought was tired and hopeful and already trying to calculate the fallout of this.

"Break," Evan said, looking down at his brother. _Peanut butter cookies_ looked back up and then jumped up enough to lick Evan's face, and Evan automatically put a hand on his back.

He thought, _No, we're brothers, I won't leave,_ as hard as he could, at the puppy and at Nameth both, and Nameth chuckled.

"Yeah, okay, Reporter. Reading you loud and clear. Let's go get your hand cleaned up, then."

* * *

Evan had to hold _peanut butter cookies_ clamped between his knees while Nameth washed and disinfected the bite marks on his hand and applied liquid bandage to the array of tiny punctures. His brother still wavered between protective growling and pained whimpers the whole time.

 _It's all right, it's all right_ , Evan thought, trying not to wince from the stinging pain. _Shhh, it's fine, almost done_.

When it actually was done, Evan immediately offered his hand for _peanut butter cookies_ to examine. It only occurred to him as the puppy was carefully, delicately sniffing the air half an inch from Evan's skin that he'd had to have it bandaged in the first place because this same puppy had _bitten_ him.

 _Wouldn't hurt you_ , the puppy insisted immediately, fierce and sure. _You're mine now_.

"I know, pup," Evan said out loud, petting him. He let up his grip so that _peanut butter cookies_ could squirm up into his lap.

"God, you're giving me boot camp flashbacks," Nameth said. "I've never seen a guy over the age of twenty this gone over a puppy."

Evan looked up, but Nameth was staring fondly across the tent to where Victory was keeping the rest of the puppies occupied.

"Uh," Evan said, and a few of the possible implications crashed in on him. "Am I going to have to...."

Nameth looked back at Evan, giving him an up-and-down look with his eyebrows raised. "The Corps wouldn't have you even if you wanted in, Reporter. I don't care what kind of war we just started. And Peanut had preserve written all over him, anybody who knew him could tell you that."

Evan looked back down at his brother, who had sprawled across his thighs and was half asleep, seeming worn out by the excitement of the last... twenty minutes? That didn't seem like enough time to go through something this life-altering. 

"Preserve?" Evan asked, looking up again.

"If a pup doesn't bond by the time he's a year old he gets shipped off to a wolf preserve. There's one just north of Pendleton--unbonded wolves, sundered wolves, they live wild up there. And I don't care how many boots or fuckin' officer candidates they paraded in front of Peanut, he wasn't going for a Marine."

Evan frowned, resting both hands gently on his dozing brother. He could feel the puppy's presence--their bond--even now, when his brother was asleep. There was a warm sense of _someone there_ \--not just someone but his brother, already familiar and essential. He'd been bonded to a wolf for less than half an hour and he couldn't bear the thought of losing him.

"He'd have hated that," Evan said, rubbing his thumb at the base of his brother's ear. "He'd have been lonely. And bored."

"Yeah," Nameth agreed. 

Evan looked up with a grin at the spark of approval he detected from Nameth, at this sign that Evan already understood his little brother that well.

Nameth grinned back. "Which is why you're only going to catch the bare minimum of shit from the brass over this."

"Oh," Evan said. "Uh. How much is the bare minimum, do you think?"

"Incoming," Nameth replied even as he pushed the thought _Oh, just enough to know you mean it_. He got to his feet, raising a hand in salute, and Evan followed a beat behind, standing up with _peanut butter cookies_ cradled in his arms and turning to see an officer enter the tent, returning Nameth's salute as he did.

The officer was a major, which Evan decoded quickly from his insignia. He gathered from Nameth's calm beside him that the man wasn't too much to be feared. The wolf at his side was barely Navi's size, with a muddled gray-brown coat.

 _Peanut butter cookies_ woke up and squirmed free of Evan's grip, dropping lightly to the ground and standing tall at Evan's feet. He came up just about to Evan's knees, so the protective gesture was mostly symbolic, but Evan appreciated it anyway.

"Major DeSantis," he introduced himself, offering a hand to Evan to shake. DeSantis's grip wasn't as crushing as Evan half-expected. "And my brother, River. I'm the BreedCom officer in charge of the nursery here--I have oversight of all the pups waiting to be shipped Stateside to bond."

"I guess we kind of jumped the gun," Evan said, glancing down at _peanut butter cookies_.

"Well," DeSantis said. "Another few weeks and you'd have missed each other completely."

Evan couldn't feel DeSantis and River the way he could Nameth and Victory--they were further away in the pack-sense, more tightly controlled, or both--but still he didn't get any impression that the mild words hid any other meaning.

"Uh," Evan said, and DeSantis raised his eyebrows and waited for it. Obviously he could read Evan better than Evan could read him; that much hadn't changed in the last half hour. Evan didn't think he'd ever surprised a Marine. "You say that like us missing each other would have been a bad thing. I can't be, you know. Ideal."

"It's not up to us to decide who's ideal," DeSantis said with a shrug. "You were embedded with First Recon, right? You must have done some homework on the wolfthreat before you went to Iraq?"

Evan nodded. A few weeks ago he'd have bristled at that, would have said he'd done _thorough research_ on the wolfthreat before he embedded. Having spent a month with them, he knew better now.

"You have to have come across the fact that a wolf's choice always stands, unless the man--or woman--in question breaks the bond. We don't force a bond broken unless a court martial orders it. We talk a lot about how trellwolves aren't dogs, aren't even domesticated. They're not property and they can't be owned. But the truth is that they are animals, and most of the time we treat them that way. So the one thing that we always honor is a wolf's choice to bond with a human. We don't interfere with that unless we have to. Peanut chose you, and you accepted his choice. You're brothers now, and the Corps will respect that."

Evan swallowed hard, fighting the feeling of _belonging_ here, among wolves, in a way he hadn't let himself acknowledge wanting to for the last month. 

_Well,_ he thought. _There goes my last shred of a claim to objectivity._

Peanut leaned against his shins, looking up with a little whine, and Evan looked down and shook his head. _I'd rather have you._

"Your situation's not unprecedented," DeSantis added. "I mean, Anderson Cooper, for fuck's sake."

Evan knew that story; everyone knew that story, the Rwandan wolf who lost his brother in combat and emerged from hiding in the bush to bond to the reporter only days later. He'd never really imagined himself in the same journalistic class as _Anderson Cooper_. Instead of bringing that up--what if they decided he was right, and no _Rolling Stone_ reporter deserved a wolf who was the offspring of insanely competent recon Marines?--Evan said, "That was an adult wolf."

DeSantis nodded. "Out of the thousands we breed and raise, we lose a few puppies to civilians every year. They take a shine to a civilian working on base or somebody visiting the PX, or the spouse or family member of a Marine. The Naval Academy lost a future officer bitch to a FedEx delivery guy a few years ago. Peanut's a smart wolf with good bloodlines, but so is this whole litter, and the whole litter before them. The Marine Corps will cope with the loss, I assure you."

"Oh," Evan said blankly. He felt _peanut butter cookies_ relax, slumping down onto Evan's feet, even as he registered his own rush of relief. "So that's it? I just take him home with me?"

DeSantis grinned, and Evan didn't need the pack-sense to pick up the amusement in it. "Oh hell no, are you out of your mind? You think we just turn a civilian loose with a wolf pup? For one thing, he's ten weeks old--we don't usually vaccinate against rabies until twelve, and he can't get into the States until he's had at least the first round. We can move that up, but you're also going to be getting some briefings on what your life is about to look like. You'll be shadowing bonded Marines so you can learn how to handle having a brother, and so they can observe you before we agree to let you out on your own. That isn't going to be for at least three days, more if we think you need more preparation. I hope you like Kuwait."

"I," Evan said, looking back and forth from DeSantis to _peanut butter cookies_ at his feet, brain shuffling through travel plans and deadlines and... 

"Wait, is that safe? Giving him the rabies shot early? He's so small."

DeSantis tilted his head and smiled. "You might just work out, Reporter."

* * *

_Peanut butter cookies_ wasn't allowed out of the camp until he'd had his shots any more than he was allowed into the United States. Evan briefly contemplated leaving his brother behind to go back into Kuwait City and retrieve his stuff; their mutual horror at the idea ended with the pup doing a four-foot vertical leap into Evan's arms. When they'd spent a minute or so clinging to each other, DeSantis told Evan to hand over his hotel room key and some directions to a sergeant under his command. They assured Evan he'd have his duffel bag back in a couple of hours.

He killed the time mostly by taking pictures of his brother, who obligingly posed.

 _We're not Marines_ , the pup observed, rolling onto his back and squirming for maximum display of fluffy belly. _What are we?_

Evan hesitated, letting the camera dangle from his hand for a moment. He knew that these decisions were up to him to make, but for a second it felt strange to just declare it as fact. But then he was a part of _peanut butter cookies_ as much as the puppy was a part of him. They were brothers, not a human with a pet; of course they were going to be doing the same job. 

_We're reporters_ , Evan informed him. _We meet people and learn about what they're doing, and then we tell their stories. And show their pictures, if we get some good ones._

 _Stories are important?_ The pup popped up to his feet and came over to sniff curiously at the camera, searching for some sign of its power or usefulness. _And pictures?_

"Stories are really important," Evan said out loud, and the puppy scrambled up into his lap. Evan scratched him just where he wanted to be scratched, and went on, "Stories can change the way people think about something--whether they support a war or oppose it, and how they treat soldiers when they go home. When I tell their stories, a lot of people will feel like they know your mom, and Fick, and Frost and Brad, and the rest of their platoon. It will be like--thousands and thousands of people will feel like a part of their pack. Like they know them and care about them that much, because I'll tell them how it was when I was with the pack, and they'll know how it feels. A Marine can only take on the people who are right in front of him, but I can reach thousands of people with a story. That's why they say the pen is--"

Evan stopped, too many words and thoughts piling up at once in his brain. He laughed, and the puppy wagged his tail in approval at the tangle of ideas and images.

"Pen," Evan said out loud. "That's you, isn't it? Pen."

 _Mightier than the sword_. Pen parroted back his thought while he growled playfully out loud, snapping at Evan's fingers.

"Okay, yeah," Evan said, catching the cheerfully gruesome mental image with which Pen illustrated that, himself standing triumphantly over a blood-soaked melee. "But a sword is actually just the blade part...."

* * *

Evan didn't even think of it until the sergeant who'd gone to get his bag--Diaz, and his brother was named Eighty, which was a new one on Evan--mentioned it, in orienting him to the camp. "...and the phones and internet are in the third tent back."

"Oh," Evan said. "Oh, shit, I need to make a call."

Eighty snorted, and Diaz looked from Evan to Pen and said, "Yeah, come on, let's get you in line."

Evan didn't have to wait too long--just long enough for Pen to make tentative friends with the wolves ahead and behind them in line, while Evan tried to work out what he was going to _say_ \--and then it was his turn. He punched in all the numbers necessary to make an international credit card call, long since memorized, though he hadn't had a chance to use them since before the invasion. It felt like a lifetime ago. 

He checked his watch, working out the time difference while the phone was ringing. It would be early afternoon in New York. A Wednesday. Claire would be at work, but she'd have her cell phone with her. She'd answer an international call; she'd know it was him. 

Sure enough, when she did pick up she said, "Evan?"

"Yeah," Evan said, laughing a little with the startlingly intense joy of hearing her voice. Pen, who'd been looking around at the other wolves, jumped up against Evan's thighs, ears pricked toward him, or toward her voice. Evan bent down as far as he could without letting the phone away from his ear and scooped Pen up, and Pen crawled half onto his shoulder and tucked his head close to the receiver. "Sorry, hi--God, it's good to hear your voice."

 _Ours?_ Pen was asking. _Pack?_

Well. That was the question. _Sh, wait_ , Evan gave back to him, squeezing him close with one arm. Even if the answer was no, he wouldn't be alone. He'd never be alone again, not on any godforsaken assignment, not ever. 

"Evan?" Claire repeated, and maybe she'd said that a few times. "Babe, where are you calling from? Are you on your way home?"

"Kuwait," Evan said. "Yeah, I--I just have to stay a while longer. Kind of a quarantine thing. I mean, I'm fine! I'm fine. I just, uh, I can't leave yet."

"You--what? What kind of quarantine--Evan, come on. Who, what, when, where, why, let's go."

"I, uh," Evan said. _Today, a wolf, his name is Pen._ No, he still wanted to lead into it a little. He didn't write wire reports, for fuck's sake. "Remember how we talked, before I left. Like, things that could happen. Going, uh, going native or something."

"Okay," Claire said slowly. "Are you calling me from Kuwait to tell me you screwed a Marine? And, what, you caught something?"

"No," Evan said. "That would--" That would have been so much easier to deal with. It wouldn't have required him to call ahead; that was a possibility they'd covered before he left. 

"No," Evan repeated. "I went way more native than that. I--I've got a wolf."

There was a long silence on the other end. Pen whined softly, and Evan heard Claire make a little startled noise on the other end of the line.

"He's just a puppy," Evan went on, switching the receiver to his other ear so he could lean his cheek against Pen's fur. "Ten weeks old. He's the one in quarantine, he's gotta have a rabies shot before he's allowed to enter the US. He's American, though--I mean, his parents are Marines. That's actually how I met him, I knew his parents. His mom is the officer bitch over the platoon I was with, she--"

Fuck, she'd totally set this up, hadn't she. 

"She adopted me," Evan said, leaving Bo's machinations for later. "I seemed kind of helpless, so she decided I was a puppy too. And my little brother here decided to make it official."

"Ev," Claire said, after another long silence, but he could hear her starting to laugh, and he grinned against Pen's side and finally answered him: _Yes, ours, pack_. "Evan, honestly, what the fuck are you going to do with a wolf?"

* * *

Evan didn't get an answer to that question in the days that followed. 

He made a few more important phone calls back to the States. His editor's reaction was limited mostly to a negotiation over how many column inches of Evan's feature could be about his own experience bonding with a wolf. They settled on a sidebar, and Evan felt like he'd gotten away with something. He told his parents, who were baffled but long since past being shocked by him. 

Evan sat through briefings and did his level best not to turn them into interviews, though his instincts ran that way when he was sitting down with someone who wanted to give him information, especially when it might mean getting them to deviate from the endless PowerPoint. He obediently shadowed a series of Marines and civilian contractors, asking them all the questions he could think of while Pen tried to comport himself with dignity in adult company. Most of the time he failed, and dragged the other wolf into playful tussling or wide-ranging games of tag, which gave Evan a lot of experience in knowing where Pen was and whether he was in real trouble. He almost never was, despite the alarming appearance of a tiny puppy being chased by a growling full-grown wolf.

Evan learned a lot about what it was like to be a wolfbrother, and came to understand even more than he'd thought he ever could about being a part of the wolfthreat. Everyone he met was eager to tell him about it, or to demonstrate by connecting with him and Pen through the pack-sense.

What no one at Camp Arifjan could tell him a damn thing about what it was going to be like to go home to New York with Pen and get on with their civilian lives. Most wolves came from the military or law enforcement, and most wolves living civilian lives had retired from one of those professions and retained those habits and pack connections. Some old-money families had a tradition of bonding with wolves that had come unglued from the tradition of military service, but those people belonged to their own insular family packs, a far weirder and more mysterious world than the military wolfthreat. None of them would be any help to Evan.

So far, what Evan did with Pen was try to satisfy his endless curiosity. In the few hours they had alone each day, Evan told Pen stories. Pen was obsessed with stories and how he could help Evan make them. Evan tried to teach him the shape of stories, and what made a _story_ different from just a catalog of events. He wound up telling Pen fairy tales and stories about the Old Ways, because they were the ones where it was the easiest to see how all the moving story-parts fit together; anyway, Pen was a kid and they were stories for kids, mostly. Pen was definitely weird and bloodthirsty enough to handle the traditional versions of fairy tales, even though in actual life he went out of his way to avoid any fights that went beyond play. 

_Civilian_ , Evan thought fondly, as he watched Pen back off hastily from a napping spot claimed by a pup a few weeks older, who outweighed him by only a few pounds. Any of Pen's siblings would have made a fight of it, and the pup who swaggered in seemed surprised when Pen didn't.

Pen backed off just far enough to watch the other pup settle down, studying him thoughtfully. When he returned his attention to Evan, Pen corrected that assessment: _Reporter_.

During the long restless night after Pen got his rabies shot--only a few days ahead of the rest of his litter, and perfectly safely, the corpsmen insisted--Evan told him endless stories while he shivered listlessly against Evan's chest. He told Pen every awful story he knew about the bad old days of disease and death, setting up the dramatic triumph of medical science and vaccination and public health. Evan dozed off a couple of hours before dawn and woke up to Pen sitting up bright-eyed and crowing through their bond about the glorious victory of his antibodies over the rabies germs.

They left Kuwait the next day, and the twenty-four hours they spent traveling to New York gave Evan his first taste of life in a new category. They had to travel in wolf class on all their flights, which meant a little extra leg- and elbow-room for Evan, since Pen more or less fit on his lap and didn't want to be anywhere else. Evan eyed the extra space he and Pen were allotted and thought about Bo and Frost's respective sizes and realized that within a year and for the rest of his life flying was going to be a much, much more cramped experience than it had ever been before.

 _Should've bonded with one of Navi's pups_ , Evan thought wryly.

Pen gave a nearly subsonic growl and closed his teeth gently but firmly on Evan's wrist. _Mine now._

* * *

Claire was waiting for them at the airport. Evan had spent the last hour convincing Pen of the importance of standing back for a minute while Evan greeted her, showing him how it was a necessary part of the story of them. Pen just barely managed it, dancing excitedly about a foot away while Evan grabbed Claire in a desperate hug. 

Claire followed up with a thorough, determined kiss, and then pulled back to say, "So? Where is he?"

Evan grinned and twisted a little without letting go of her; Pen jumped up against Evan's thigh--his head already came up higher than it had when they met--and nosed inquisitively toward Claire. 

Evan couldn't help chuckling a little--Pen was pouring _like me like me like me_ through their bond at a near-deafening intensity. In the next second, Evan realized that he couldn't hear Claire--never would--and didn't know exactly what that cautious look on her face meant. He was never going to be able to hear her, would never _know_ her the way he knew Pen, the way he couldn't help getting to know any wolfbrother he and Pen spent any significant amount of time with. 

_Oh. Like that._ The things Marines had told him about other relationships--things he'd thought wouldn't apply, because he knew perfectly well how to be wolfless, how to have relationships while wolfless--suddenly struck home. Evan tightened his grip a little without meaning to, and Claire looked up from Pen to him. 

She gave him a hesitant smile, and then looked down, offering a hand to Pen. "Hello, there. I'm Claire."

Pen touched his nose to her fingers, and Evan was almost overwhelmed by the sudden strong smell of _peanut butter cookies_ as Pen introduced himself in turn. 

"Pen says hello," Evan supplied, because there wasn't any better translation. Pen and Claire both seemed willing to be pleased with each other; it was only Evan who seemed to realize that something fundamental had changed. He shifted his backpack on his shoulder and decided not to mention it.

* * *

Once they'd survived their first night in New York--Evan with a sudden new appreciation for the territory being fought over in any given war--it was time to check in with their local Marine Corps office. Pen got almost exactly the same checkup he'd gotten before they left Camp Arifjan, barely two days before, and Evan got some more forms to fill out to get Pen registered with the city and state, and a stack of contact information. He had numbers to call if Pen got sick, got hurt, or got into serious trouble, for Claire to call if Evan was incapacitated in any way, and a long list of the open-membership veterans' packs of Manhattan. There were dozens, variously specialized for certain units or theaters of action, but none of them were for civilians who wound up accidentally bonded with Corps-bred puppies. Still, Evan knew better than to argue. He pocketed the list and headed out into the city with his brother at his side.

It was weird being in New York with Pen. For one thing, Evan was getting an entirely new perspective on his city; Pen was wide-eyed and fascinated. Evan had tried to explain what to expect, but a puppy who'd only ever seen military camps in Kuwait had no way to imagine what New York was like. Halfway from the Corps office to his editor's, Evan redirected them, going a few blocks out of his way to show Pen Times Square. It wasn't until he was standing there, grinning as Pen darted around, trying to smell everything, that Evan realized what he'd just done. 

He was a New Yorker; he had showed family and friends who were visiting around the city, and he'd always felt a New Yorker's instinctive disgust at too-obvious tourists, feeling embarrassed anytime anyone snapped a photo. But Pen made Evan want to hop the ferry to the Statue of Liberty or ride to the top of the Empire State Building. He wanted to show everything off to Pen, just to watch him be delighted by it.

For now, Evan trailed Pen through the tourist hordes, trying to look dignified while being orbited by a hyperactive puppy. He fell back on professionalism, playing the reporter, watching everyone else rather than worry about them watching him. 

They really were watching him, though. No one around them could make sense of him and Pen, and it was even worse from other wolfbrothers--and wolfsisters, who were a lot more common here than they had been in Kuwait. Back there, literally everyone Evan met had already known his and Pen's story, since it had spread at light speed through the pack-sense of the camp after Pen made his very public choice. 

At home, packless, they were totally inexplicable. Evan obviously didn't belong to any of the professions--or the social class--that would have made wolfbrotherhood so essential to his daily life that he'd have rebonded with a puppy after losing a brother he'd bonded with at a more normal age. No one took a brother this late--it was basically the President and Evan and no one in between. 

No one asked; no one would presume to actually _ask_. They just stared. Evan told himself it would be easier in a year or so--once Pen was grown, it wouldn't be quite so obvious how young he was and how late they'd bonded. Then Evan might just be ex-military or ex-law enforcement--or on the outs with his rich family, whatever. In a year or so they'd be totally ordinary. 

Evan's sense of smell was suddenly overwhelmed with _hot broken plastic and an explosion of ink_ , Pen summoning him with his scent-name. Evan shouldered through the tourists to find Pen watching in rapt, fearless fascination as two tourists' wolves snarled at each other while a couple of grim police wolves bore down on them. Evan glanced around and found every other wolf in sight shifting--or being forcibly shifted--away from the incipient fight.

Pen looked up at Evan proudly. _I found a story!_

Evan looked down at him for a minute and then bent over and slung his brother over his shoulder. Pen howled a plaintive protest-- _I want to see!_ \--but didn't fight as Evan hauled him in the direction of the _Rolling Stone_ offices, and Evan thought, okay, no. They were never going to be ordinary. He could only hope they'd eventually be less obvious.

* * *

They'd been home a couple of weeks when Evan took Pen down to Central Park for the first time, winding through one of Evan's favorite paths on the way to the wolf woods. Evan knew perfectly well that, however convincing the urban legends, there wasn't really a rogue feral pack living in the caves in Central Park. However certain he'd been of it before on the basis of sheer facts, he realized now that there was no way the thousands of wolves who visited the wolf woods every day could possibly miss them.

 _They could live in the sewers, though,_ Pen offered sagely, standing on a rock and scenting the wind, giving Evan an idea of where the other nearby wolves were. There were dozens in range of Pen's senses, formed into loose, casual groups with a few breaking off on their own to explore.

"Go on, go explore," Evan said, waving Pen on and refusing to contemplate packs of wolves roaming the sewers. 

_You'll run with me tomorrow?_

Pen was the world's most persistent and unavoidable personal trainer, which Claire found hilarious.

"I swear, five miles at least. Go on, go."

Pen took off, and Evan sat down. If he closed his eyes he could follow Pen through the trees, or plot him on a mental map relative to every other wolf Pen was aware of. He thought he understood now, how Fick and Bo had ranged so comfortably away from each other; the bond really made distance almost irrelevant. Evan liked having Pen close, and he could see why most guys and their brothers stayed near each other, but it was a good division of labor if you both could bear it. Fick and Bo obviously could.

Evan leaned back on his hands, staring vaguely into the trees and mulling over how to write about that so it would make sense to wolfless readers--and where the hell to stick that bit of exposition into the feature. He also, half-guiltily, tried to figure out how much better he could do it in the book he could already see taking shape around the _Rolling Stone_ article--there was just too much he'd seen, too much he had to say, to fit it all into his editor's limits.

He didn't exactly lose track of Pen, but Evan wasn't paying him any attention. They had hung out in some of the smaller city parks with grown wolves around, and Pen knew how to handle himself. He was the last wolf in the world who'd ever start any trouble.

The burst of sudden wild fury hit Evan out of nowhere. He was on his feet, hands curling into fists and looking around wildly for something to hit even before Pen came charging out of the trees, snarling as he ran.

Evan stopped short at that, too surprised to make sense of it before Pen had leaped up onto the rock Evan had been sitting on. He threw himself off the other side, pouncing on a shape Evan barely had time to see before it went down under Pen's attack.

"Pen!" Evan yelled, more concerned that Pen was going to get hurt than anything else; he scrambled over the rock to where Pen was rolling around with--

"Pen, stop, that's a _dog_ ," Evan yelled, pushing _don't, it isn't fair_ at his brother, using disapproval like a blunt weapon. 

It worked. Pen launched himself backward off of the dog, planting himself firmly between Evan and it. It was only after he'd stopped the fight that Evan realized he'd done that the way he was supposed to; he'd been drilled on not reaching into a fight between wolves. 

_"Not wanting to get your hand bitten is a good instinct,"_ one of the Marines briefing him had assured him. _"Because once you get hurt, your brother's going to go berserk."_

Evan hadn't believed Pen would go berserk under any circumstances at all, but now he looked down at the puppy--at the little wolf, who stood nearly as tall as--well, as a full-grown dog, which looked like what he'd been fighting with.

Pen's foe was floppy-eared and spotted, and couldn't have weighed over fifty pounds. Evan didn't have time to see much more--not even whether it was wearing a collar--before it raced off through the trees, hopefully getting the hell out of the wolf woods. It was moving too fast to be badly hurt, so Evan probably didn't have to call in the Marines over the scuffle.

Pen turned to Evan once the dog was well away. He propped his paws on Evan's thighs and sniffed worriedly at him, like _Evan_ had just been in a fight.

"What the hell was that, Pen?" Evan demanded, reaching down--not all that far down--to run his hands over his brother. There were a few points of pain, but Pen had inherited his father's thick coat. The dog hadn't managed to draw blood in the short scrap, however seriously they'd both been taking it.

Pen growled, pushing a shadow of his previous fury through their bond, and gave Evan the image. The dog had been creeping slowly toward Evan through the trees, approaching him from his blind side. Stalking him, Pen darkly concluded.

"He was probably scared," Evan pointed out, looking around again worriedly for the dog. "He was probably hungry--"

Pen growled louder, dropping down to all four feet and turning to look the way the dog had gone.

"He was probably going to _beg for food_ ," Evan elaborated. "Dogs mostly don't hunt. They get humans to feed them."

Pen let out a dubious huff and sidestepped closer to Evan. _Not from you. He can go bother some other human._

Evan stared down at Pen, bemused. _I thought you didn't like to fight._

Pen looked up at him with obvious disbelief. _I'll kill anyone who tries to hurt you_ , he replied, not bragging or threatening, but explaining to Evan a fact as simple as Evan explaining that dogs begged for food. _You're my brother_.

Evan crouched down and slung an arm around Pen, feeling suddenly shaky. Maybe the adrenaline was just hitting him now. 

"You," Evan replied, as he rubbed his own face with his free hand, "are your mother's son."

* * *

Claire threw up her hands. "Fine, don't come! Just--don't tell me it's about fucking working, because it's not!"

"Right," Evan yelled back, "because you're a fucking mind-reader and you completely understand my process--"

"I do understand your precious fucking process, Evan, or at least I used to--"

"Yeah," Evan snapped, "Yeah, you used to."

There was an instant of frozen silence, and Evan watched her face go from shocked hurt to fury, her hands closing into fists. He found himself trying to gauge whether she'd actually take a swing at him and in almost the same second he saw Pen arrowing toward her, having burst out of his hiding place behind the couch. It occurred to Evan with sudden, utter horror that Pen might imagine Claire was threatening him, and Evan lurched forward, arms spread wide.

Claire jerked back, but Pen was already at her feet--pressing against her legs and turning to warn Evan off with an exasperated snap of teeth.

Evan stopped short, staring down at his brother.

 _Not angry,_ Pen pointed out insistently. _Sad and scared. Don't shout._

Evan had lost track of his own anger in that moment of stark fear, and now Pen pushed it at him: the particular sound of Claire's agitation, the scents and tells that meant sadness and anxiety, the utter absence of real aggression. 

Evan covered his eyes with one hand, trying to hide his wince. He should have known better than to think that not mentioning to Claire that something had changed would actually keep anything from changing, but he'd thought it would be enough to want nothing to change. He still wanted this, wanted her, she just--she didn't know him better than anyone else did anymore, because now there was Pen. And suddenly having to say things to have them understood felt like work--literally, like it was his job and he shouldn't have to do it the rest of the time.

"I'm sorry," Evan said, still with his hand hiding his face.

"Evan," Claire said, and she actually did sound a little scared.

He looked up quickly, and found that Pen--who was usually constrained by Evan's insistence that he be polite to Claire and give her room to breathe--had curled his body nearly into a complete circle around her legs and was staring up intently at her face. 

"Pen," Evan said, trying to wave him away, but he just huffed at Evan. 

_She's pack, too,_ Pen insisted. _She can't hear us, but she's still our pack. You said so._

 _I know_ , Evan said, and out loud, "He's telling me to be nice to you. And to explain."

Claire raised a hand to her mouth, and Evan realized how that might have sounded. He darted over to her, shoving Pen aside so he could kneel down at Claire's side, leaning his head against her hip and putting his arms around her. Pen made space for Evan but didn't move away, leaning against her other side.

"He's saying I've been scaring you," Evan said. "He's saying you've noticed I have this whole other person in my life and it's scaring you and making you sad, and I've been doing a really shitty job of letting you know that I'm not going to break up with you to go live in a cave on a wolf preserve with him."

"Well he's fucking right," Claire said, but her voice shook a little and her hand came to rest on Evan's hair. 

Evan dug in his own pocket and tugged out a faded, water-wrinkled rectangle. He held it up mutely toward her. 

Claire laughed unsteadily. "Oh my God, Evan, what did you do to it?"

"Carried it," Evan said, tucking her photo back into his pocket. It was the most innocuous possible image--a passport photo, basically, but he'd wanted something of her to carry with him. He'd shown it to a couple of the Marines--ones who'd mentioned wives or girlfriends at home, ones he knew wouldn't mock his strict preference for women too harshly. They'd made the polite noises--a few had shyly revealed their own mementos of women they loved--and then Evan had hidden it away again.

"I feel weird now if I don't know where it is," Evan admitted. He'd never let her see him tucking it into his pocket. He didn't want her to ask him about it; it seemed worrisome, like a symptom of something, that he still wanted the picture with him when he had the actual woman in his bed every night. "I spent so much time over there making sure I hadn't lost it, I. I always have it in my pocket now."

"Ev," she said, sounding at a loss.

"I want you, I still--I want to make this work," Evan insisted. "I just--I'm just not--"

 _I'll help,_ Pen offered determinedly. His senses could gauge Claire's moods better, and he was far less likely to get lost in work, or in his own head. 

Evan muffled a laugh against Claire's side.

"Pen might be better at relationships than I am right now," Evan confessed. "But he says he'll help."

"Well I'm sure we'll be fine, then," Claire agreed, and Evan looked over just in time to see her other hand come down gently onto Pen's head, petting cautiously.

Pen's tongue lolled out, and Pen reiterated, _Be nice_.

"I'll come to the party," Evan added.

Claire laughed, and Evan realized he hadn't heard that sound in a long time.

* * *

Evan usually found it reassuring when the Marines talked to him, or talked to each other in his presence. Ray never shut up, and Evan had gotten used to that constant stream of half-nonsense chatter. It was the silence he found confusing and unnerving, most of the time.

But not now. They were stuck at a bridge in utter darkness, and there were bullets flying everywhere. Evan knew that the men should have gone totally silent--except for Trombley, and yelling at Trombley--because they should be deep into the pack-sense during combat. Now they were all yelling. Now Ray was yelling, actually got out of the Humvee to shout back at the others, and that had to mean they were cut off from the pack-sense. That meant the team Evan was trusting to keep him alive was as alone as he was--and he was alone, he was utterly alone in the dark. There was no one with him. He was cut off from everything, relying only on his own weak senses as he huddled in the back of the Humvee, listening to the zip of bullets and the retorts of Brad's M4 and Trombley's SAW and Ray's futile, furious screaming--

No. He wasn't alone. He wasn't ever alone anymore. He had Pen now; he had a brother. Pen was curled up in his lap. He shouldn't be there, Evan knew. It was much too dangerous here for such a little puppy. He should be in an armored box at least, like the other wolves, but he was whining softly, licking at Evan's hands, and Evan ducked down, curling himself around Pen. He wanted to tell Pen it would be okay, but he couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't even hold on, and Pen's whining got louder and louder. Evan knew that at any second Pen would slip out of his grip and out of the Humvee, right out into that hail of bullets raining down on them.

Evan's arms flailed out and he caught two handfuls of Pen's fur. He realized that he could open his eyes, and that the darkness wasn't as complete as he'd thought; then he realized that Pen was four months old and didn't fit in his lap anymore, though he had climbed half on top of Evan in his worry. After that Evan realized that he was in bed, and that the constant percussive sound was rain pelting against the bedroom window. He looked over to see Claire sitting up and watching him with wide-eyed worry. 

"Sorry," Evan said, and he could feel Pen rummaging through Evan's nightmare and the memory it dragged with it, trying to make sense of it and hold it balanced between them. Evan wanted to close it off from him--Pen was bigger now, but still a puppy, just a kid--but Pen wouldn't back off. He whimpered again at Evan's remembered helpless terror, and Evan leaned his cheek into Pen's fur and repeated, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"There was this ambush," Evan said to Claire, remembering to translate for her. "It was--something went really weird in the pack-sense. Everyone had been mad at Fick beforehand, and they didn't want to go because they knew it was going to be an ambush, and it was--it was really bad, it seemed like they couldn't hear each other or anything. We were just stuck there, getting shot at from both sides and unable to get away. They were all--I knew they were cut off just like I was, and I thought, that's it. We're going to die."

Pen whined again, and Claire made almost the same noise and scooted over, grabbing Evan and holding on tight.

"But it was fine," Evan added, trying to drag Pen away from the memory, trying to shake it off himself. "Bo corralled everybody--she and Fick ran from one Humvee to the next and pulled in all the teams, so the pack-sense was working again and they figured out how to get the Humvees moving, and nobody was cut off anymore."

 _Except you_ , Pen thought, still worrying at Evan's memory of being alone in the dark, having no idea what was going on as the shots went on and on around him. Evan had told Pen stories, but he'd kept his feelings out of it. Most of the time it was hard for Evan to really remember what it had been like, being just himself without a brother. Telling the stories to Pen had been work, just the process of composing an article. He hadn't let Pen see it and feel it like this before.

"Except you," Claire said out loud, and Evan looked over at her, startled by the way she'd shared Pen's thought. "But you still are. Evan, I've read about this--you and Pen, you should have a pack. Wolves and wolfbrothers aren't supposed to be alone. It isn't good for you."

Evan thought of that long list of veterans' packs and shrugged helplessly. "I know, but civilians wouldn't understand this, and we're not Marines."

Claire raised her eyebrows. "Didn't you tell me you got adopted? What the hell good is that if you can't tell the other kids that your mom will come kick their ass if they don't let you play with them?"

Evan couldn't help smiling at the mental image of Bo herding some New York pack into place around him and Pen. She'd found the two of them for each other, so she probably wouldn't have hesitated to find them a pack, too, if she could.

 _We'll find one_ , Pen assured him confidently, having caught Evan's mental image of the long list of contact numbers. _We can do it._

* * *

Evan didn't share Pen's blithe confidence in their ability to walk into any given pack full of Marines and find a place, so the next day he did what he should have done weeks earlier, and tracked down the one Bravo Two Marine he knew was already back in the States. Pappy had been sent back to Pendleton to recover, and await the return of the rest of the platoon, after being shot in the foot. Rudy had gotten a letter from him in California before Evan left Baghdad. He'd never been Evan's biggest fan, but he knew who Evan and Pen's mom was.

Once he'd gotten Pappy on the phone, Evan tumbled out the whole story, a lot less coherently than he'd related it in his much-edited, and probably yet-to-be-read, emails to Fick and Brad. Pappy was silent for what felt like at least a minute, and then said slowly, "I'll be damned. I guess once in a while two blind pigs find each other."

Evan blinked down at Pen, but Pen didn't understand that one either. "Uh. Yeah. The thing is, we need to figure out a pack to join, and I don't know...."

"You gonna write about them, too?" Pappy asked, sounding more curious than accusatory.

Evan didn't know how to answer. He actually did have a notebook out--he had, without thinking about it, jotted down that phrase about the blind pigs--but was this an interview or a conversation with something like a friend? Would it go in that sidebar his editor had settled on? Would it go in the book? 

"I don't know," Evan confessed. "I'm a reporter, and Pen's my brother, and--I don't know."

"Well, that sounds like the truth," Pappy allowed. "Lemme call some guys and see who we know in New York."

"Thanks," Evan said helplessly.

Two hours later he got a call from Captain Tom Gardner (retired), who cut off Evan's anxious explanations with an invitation to come meet his pack--mostly guys who'd been to Afghanistan at some point in the last two years--at a park that weekend. 

"Wear go-fasters," Tom told him. "We're not bringing in a recon-bred pup and leaving him off our capture the flag team."

Evan felt a weird picking-teams-for-kickball nervousness until the weekend, but he didn't have any more nightmares. He hardly had time. Pen kept dragging him out of bed at sunrise to go running, determined to impress their new pack.

* * *

"So are we going to be seeing you guys on ESPN next season?" 

Fick grinned as he said it, but Evan was suddenly conscious that he'd just spent the first ten minutes of the hour they'd found to meet going on and on about playing city league capture the flag. He'd wound up coming to the airport so that he and Pen could see Fick and Bo again before they shipped out to England; Pen's little brothers were going to be Royal Marines.

"Well, Pen's gotta finish growing," Evan said, glancing over at his brother, who was still lying on his back letting Bo wash his face and generally get reacquainted with him. Pen was six months old and already close to a hundred pounds; he was about as big as Ray's sister, Navi, had ever gotten. "Plus the whole veterans' league thing. Tom's trying to get a waiver because Pen's a Marine Corps dependent, but so far we can't play in championship games."

"Well, if you want a serving Marine to write a letter in support, just say the word," Fick said, and glanced fondly toward Bo, who was already getting big with her next litter. "In the next three months, though, otherwise I'd have to get Brad to write it."

"He might be in favor of keeping Pen busy and out of trouble," Evan suggested.

Fick laughed at that. "He keeps saying it's not Pen he's worried about."

Evan grinned uncertainly. "Uh... me, or everybody in Pen's path?"

Fick shook his head. "He never specifies."

Before Evan could say anything else, Fick's gaze on him sharpened, his expression turning serious. "How are you doing, though? Most of us get a little more time to think about what we're choosing before we bond to wolves."

Fick looked over at Bo again, a strange expression on his face, and through Bo and Pen's mother-and-son pack-sense Evan could feel a little shadow of what Fick felt when he looked at her: the same helpless, overwhelming love Evan felt for Pen, and something like the same bewilderment Evan felt every day he woke up and found himself a wolfbrother, that _how did this happen, how did I get here_ question that was apparently never going to quite go away. Evan suspected it didn't help much, in the end, having more or less time to think about it.

"It's good," Evan said firmly. "Being Pen's brother is the most incredible thing I've ever done, or been, I just...."

Fick looked up and met his gaze, raising his eyebrows slightly and waiting for Evan to finish that thought.

Evan raised his hand, waving the seriousness of Fick's gaze away. "I'm a reporter. When I embedded with you guys--I mean, it occurred to me that I could get hurt or die or something, but mostly I figured I would go to Iraq, I would get a story, and I would come home and the story would be over. But I came home, and I'm still--I'm never going to be all the way done with you guys. I'm never going to get all the way out of this story, and I have no idea how it ends."

 _I know!_ Pen piped up, struggling half-upright under Bo's attentions. _They all lived happily ever after._

Bo huffed and got Pen by the scruff of the neck, shaking him a little and tugging him back to the ground.

Evan looked nervously over at Fick. "Are we gonna have to go run three times around the terminal now?"

Fick shook his head, fighting a smile. "Just don't say it out loud and you'll probably be all right."


End file.
